


Sick Day

by TheFlashFic



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 18:54:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2743445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFlashFic/pseuds/TheFlashFic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From a prompt on Tumblr: Iris takes care of a sick Barry. Established WestAllen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sick Day

**Author's Note:**

> My first attempt at Flash fic. For onyour-right, on tumblr.

Iris didn’t bother knocking on the door. She’d had a key to his place since the day he first moved out of their house, and she had always felt free to use it. She let herself in the way she’d done a thousand times before, even before they were officially a couple.

And she found inside exactly what she expected to find.

He was on the second-hand couch in his small living room, long limbs splayed out like a beached squid as he snored.

The coffee table was pulled up close to the couch and littered with the inevitable debris of a sick young man who didn’t know a thing about taking care of himself: kleenex he wasn’t using, bottles of cold medicine and tylenol and echinacea (Iris had a phase in high school of really getting into herbal remedies, and though she stopped giving them much credit after only a few weeks, Barry still offered her St Johns Wort when she was depressed and echinacea when cold season came around). There was an abandoned bowl of soup with oily patches on the surface, and a can of sprite sitting open to go flat.

She couldn’t help a laugh, though she kept it quiet in case he was actually asleep. His eyes opened almost instantly, though, and went wide when he saw her standing there.

“Hey!” He sat up instantly, hauling himself up against the arm of the couch and pasting a smile on his pale face.

Iris folded her arms across her chest, trying to look stern. “And just why did I have to hear from my dad that you were too sick to work?”

Barry’s fake smile faded but he shook his head. “I’m not. I mean.” He flushed, and she frowned at the way it seemed splotchy on his otherwise pale face. “I mean it’s nothing. It’ll pass. I heal quick.”

“From injuries, Caitlin says. Not germs.”

“I’m fine, really.” His eyes were wide and sincere despite the obvious lie.

She sighed. It was ridiculous that she wasn’t immune to him yet. Since they were ten she’d lived with those earnest eyes and that innocent face. She should have developed a tolerance. The problem was she knew him too well. She knew exactly what he was thinking as he sat there smiling and pasty-faced, determined to make her think he was fine. She knew even before she said anything why Barry hadn’t called her, why her dad had to ask if Barry was feeling any better.

He was the smartest idiot she’d ever met. But he was her idiot.

She moved to the couch and perched against the arm furthest from him, peering at his collection of home remedies. “I can’t believe a guy who knows all the stuff about science you know would still make chicken soup when he’s sick. Isn’t that some old wives’ tale?”

“Actually there are a few good reasons why chicken soup is ideal for someone who’s recovering from…but I’m not sick. Not really. Sniffles. So it’s no big deal either way.”

“Barry.” She drew her feet up on the couch cushions, sitting sideways on the arm of the chair and looking straight at him. “You have to stop.”

He blinked. “Stop?”

She met those big innocent green eyes but didn’t back down from speaking her truths. “You have to stop worrying that I’m going to leave you if you’re not strong all the time.”

Barry did that thing he always did when called on his crap – he shook his head, incredulous, laughing his short, nervous laugh. And then his cheeks started to spread with pink and his gaze skittered away from hers.

She knew him too well. It was funny, she thought when they started dating that she’d have to relearn everything she knew about him, as if he’d change because he was in a relationship. Like his smiles would mean something different or his insecurities would shift. But Barry was Barry. He hadn’t changed in the slightest.

“I know you,” she reminded him, her voice soft in the face of his wince. “You can’t forget about Eddie, or Jamal, or that quarterback I dated in high school, or my crush on your giant friend, Oliver Queen. You think I’m attracted to strength, and if you don’t measure up I’m going to take off the next time a guy who can bench you comes around.”

He swallowed. “It’s not…”

The good thing about their growing up together was that he knew her as well as she knew him. All she had to do was purse her lips a little and his words faltered and his shoulders slumped.

He really did look pretty bad. Thin as he was, and now with the Flash screwing with his metabolism all the time, when he went without eating a couple of meals it showed. There were dark smears under his eyes, his cheeks were sharper. His hair, his one regular young man vanity, was limp and pasted flat on his head.

He always was a baby when he got sick. It probably didn’t help that Iris and her dad were both complete mother hens. So mark that down as one actual change now that her and Barry were dating: he was too scared to let her mother him anymore.

She smiled suddenly when another memory occurred to her. “You remember when I got my first period?”

Barry looked up at her, brow furrowing, but he was quick to jump on the change of subject. “It’s not a memory I dust off and relive a lot, but I guess.”

She made a face at him, but the smile stayed put. “Dad freaked out and brought home like a dozen boxes of pads, and swore up and down he was going to find an adult woman somewhere and drag her home to educate me. And I was scared because even though the girls at school all bragged about getting theirs like it was some sort of glittery mystical thing, really it was bloody and gross and I ruined these totally cute yellow shorts that—”

His face was starting to screw up as she talked.

She laughed, waving it off. “The point is, you took off and went to the library and came back two hours later and…” She shook her head, laughing. “You didn’t say a word, just pushed it into my hands and took off. And it was…oh my god, Barry, amazing. Like a school report. Menstruation: Fact and Fiction.”

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t call it that,” he said, going red but smiling finally.

“We could check. I’m pretty sure it’s up in the attic in a box somewhere. But no, the point is, you wrote this whole thing with bullet points and references, with everything from average duration and amount of blood loss in a typical cycle to tips about how to ease cramps and bloating. Like if Albert Einstein wrote for Seventeen Magazine.”

He chuckled, pinched and scratchy enough to remind her of the point.

“And it helped. Between you and my dad and the clueless civilian aide he brought home from work the next day who told me all about the flowering of womanhood and the influence of tide energies or whatever, I actually made it through laughing about it all.”

She stood up, moving around that cluttered coffee table slowly. “The thing is, we’ve always been able to be there for each other when things come up. Even the gross or embarrassing things. I’ve never had that with anybody else. Even with my dad it’s different. He was a grown-up; we were living through it together.”

Barry nodded, watching her with a crooked smile.

She pushed aside a stack of case files – because of course he’d also be trying to work - and sat on the edge of the coffee table. She met his eyes, and spoke sincerely. “I don’t want that to go away because you’re scared I’ll think less of you.”

“I wasn’t really _scared_ that yes I was.” Barry sighed, slumping against the back of the couch. “I don’t even know why I’m trying to fake you out.”

“I don’t either. You never could.” She smiled, suddenly cheerful. “Lay down.”

“But I’m…” He only met her eyes for a moment before he gave up, pushing himself back down and lying back on his smooshed pillow with a sigh.

“Good boy.” She regarded him for a fond moment, shaking her head. “I was never obsessed with The Flash because he was fast, or strong. It was because he used those things to do good for people. And that part of him is all you, Barry. As long as you don’t lose that, I won’t go anywhere.” She leaned in and slipped her fingers through his sad, wilted hair, pushing it off his face absently.

His face tilted upward into her touch, a small and unconscious movement that made her heart beat a little harder in her chest.

“So let me take care of you,” she said after a moment, feeling the heat coming from his fevered skin. “Tell me what you need, no matter how silly. I’ll do anything I can.”

“Anything?” His eyes were already heavy, half-closed. His smile was bleary. “Promise?”

She recognized the tone in his voice. “Not that. I have finals in a week and you are not going to kiss your disgusting germs all over me, pal.”

He laughed without opening his eyes. “Damn it.”

She shook her head, adoring him a little bit more in the face of his stupid fevered grin. She didn’t bother even trying to resist the urge to lean down and press the desired kiss on his warm forehead. “Why am I such a sucker for you?”

“S’okay, I won’t tell anyone.” He held out a hand, and she took it instantly. He brought her fingers to his mouth and brushed his lips to her knuckles. “Can wash these germs off.”

There went her chest pounding again. It was funny: much of her life she spent insisting to Barry how amazing he would be for some lucky girl, with his open sweetness and cornball sense of romance. She just hadn’t ever put herself in the role of the girl.

Still, she’d been right.

He snored softly, something he only did when drunk or sick, and she pried her hand from his and stood up to go find a blanket.

Of course she’s been right, she reflected with a smile. She always was. Eventually.  


End file.
